By Loren Long
A little tractor is replaced by a big new one and sent behind the barn, and when the calf is sinking in the mud pond, he's the only one she'll come out for.
Otis is a small, friendly tractor, and his best friend is the calf in the next field. They race around the apple tree, they rest in its shade, and at night he putts her a lullaby through the fence until she falls asleep. Then a big yellow tractor arrives, and Otis is parked behind the barn and forgotten, and the calf is left on her own. When she wanders into Mud Pond and starts to sink, the farmer comes, the fire department comes, and the shiny new tractor comes, and not one of them can pull her out. She won't move until she hears an engine she knows.
Farm-mad children are usually tractor-mad too, and this one gives you both at once. Loren Long paints a warm, rounded, old-fashioned America where the animals are companions rather than livestock, so it stays gentle. What makes it more than a machine book is that Otis gets thrown away and then comes back, and your child feels both halves. For a lot of children this is one of the first picture books that asks something real of them, and it's a kind place to start.